Astral Abraxas wrote:You don't want to learn how to speak natural English. The average native English speaker talks like a moron. It's the same with Japanese. Go ahead and be proud about having the ability to talk like a moron. I'd rather sound intelligent than natural. Not saying that I do but it's ultimately my goal.

Honestly, I think I just looked you in the face. I read this and laughed and laughed and laughed.

私は新しい人が日本語に勉強しているんです。私に小さな文章を使ってください。また日本語でしか言ってくれます。私は日本語と英語使います。（これで私の言ったことは分かります。）I am a new person studying Japanese. Pleause use small sentences when talking to me. Also, please only use Japanese. I will speak in English and Japanese. (Just to be sure I'm understood.)

My understanding of the basics has been all screwed up, somehow, so I'm trying to set that right and think that speaking it is the best way for me to get it. ですから

Wait, I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is. You didn't really specify in your OP (most of us have a general idea of what you're looking for) and your title doesn't make sense to me. Also:

「たくさん人がそのサイトを使うと言っていた。」 seems to make more sense to me. At the very least, I'm skeptical of the です following your final verb...

Yeah, my fault. I don't always get to the point, immediately; and the thread title is metaphoric, sorry.

I'm reading other threads, as well; just wanted this one for me to have conversations. Only just registered on Lang-8 and am testing the water, there.

Thanks for that correction. I'm a little irritated with myself for going with what I did in place of the English "mentioned". Too much English in my Japanese thinking, again.

今、私の一つのjournalポストが書きます。

私は何か言いたいです。けれど何事が知りません。

My understanding of "です" at the end is sketchy, really. Sometimes it seems it's just used for the polite ending needed, since it seems there are some verb forms that don't have a difference between polite and informal. Unless you can make 「言いたい」 polite using the typical suffix: 「言いたいます」. ?

I don't really understand what 「私は何か言いたいです。けれど何事が知りません。」 means, so I can't say if there's anything really wrong with it or not...

As far as です is concerned, it's used in the polite forms of nouns and adjectives, but is not part of any verb structures that I know of. If you take a look at a conjugation chart, you'll see pretty quickly what I mean.

I don't recognize 言いたい , but there's usually a pretty clear difference between the plain form and the long form, especially for verbs. I occasionally get caught up on -い adjectives, since there are two different polite forms.

私は新しい人が日本語に勉強しているんです。私に小さな文章を使ってください。また日本語でしか言ってくれます。私は日本語と英語使います。（これで私の言ったことは分かります。）I am a new person studying Japanese. Pleause use small sentences when talking to me. Also, please only use Japanese. I will speak in English and Japanese. (Just to be sure I'm understood.)

私は新しい人が日本語に勉強しているんです。====================================- Japanese is the object. Naturally. No reason why you should be using に- 私は新しい人が doesn't work at all. は marks the topic and が marks the subject. You're the topic and some new guy is the subject? I'm sure you didn't mean that . To do what you wanted to, I think it's best if you use a verb-stem+始める construction and say that it was only a little awhile ago, or recently. Anything that gives the listener a time frame that tells how new you are.

私に小さな文章を使ってください=========================I'm not too sure why, but this seems wrong to me. If not wrong at least awkward feeling.

また日本語でしか言ってくれます。=========================しか is used with a verb in it's negative form and implies it's not enough. だけ is used with a verb in it's positive form and implies that it is enough. また also sounds strange. さらに sounds better. 言う means to "to say" or "to call" . 話す（to speak) or しゃべる(to chat) is definitely a better choice.

これで私の言ったことは分かります===========================This is incredibly unnatural and slightly wrong. これで was your way of trying to say "TO(for the sake of) understanding" but instead you tried to say "by this (method) (you) will understand the thing which I said" didn't you Well... It doesn't work that way lol. ために or ように would be a good choice. Also some words need to be switched around and changed xDxDxD

There are certain ways to say things. You can't just look in a dictionary and put the words together yourself. Even if you know the word order you're not going to make much sense.

Recently, I started studying Japanese. Please use simple Japanese. Furthermore, only speak in Japanese. In order to understand my Japanese, I'll use English too.

That should be better. I tried to keep it as literal as possible and as simple as possible based on what you were trying to say. I'm a little too tired to make my own response in Japanese now D: I'm going to go take a nap first...

lonelytraveler8 wrote:「たくさん人がそのサイトを使うと言っていた。」 seems to make more sense to me. At the very least, I'm skeptical of the です following your final verb...

It doesn't follow the final verb directly; it follows ん, which is a contraction of の in this context. Adding のです after a plain verb form emphasizes that the sentence is an explanation. (It can be used with other connotations that I don't have a great grasp of, but that's the primary usage.) It's an extremely common construction and seems appropriate enough here.

I have no comment on either your or ヴェンリメル's version of the sentence as a whole, though, but I suspect that they say different things. ヴェンリメル probably means "many people talk about that site" -- I have no idea if he phrased it correctly or not -- whereas your version means "Many people say they use that site."

lonelytraveler8 wrote:I don't really understand what 「私は何か言いたいです。けれど何事が知りません。」 means, so I can't say if there's anything really wrong with it or not...

Looks to me that the intended meaning is, "I want to say something. But I don't know anything." If that is indeed the intended meaning, I don't know if it's correct or not, except that が should be を. But 何も might be a better choice than 何事を. (I don't know the difference between the two, it's just that 何も is a much more familiar construction to me, whereas I haven't encountered 何事 before. That doesn't mean it's uncommon, though, as my own experience is limited.)

lonelytraveler8 wrote:As far as です is concerned, it's used in the polite forms of nouns and adjectives, but is not part of any verb structures that I know of. If you take a look at a conjugation chart, you'll see pretty quickly what I mean.

言いたい means "I want to say". 言いたいです is indeed the proper way to turn this from plain into polite form, because the -tai form of a verb is an adjective. It can be conjugated like an adjective, too: 言いたくない "don't want to say", 言いたかった "wanted to say", 言いたくなかった "didn't want to say".

By the way, one important point here is that you generally can't use the -tai form to describe what somebody else wants, only what you want, because you're not psychic and can't know for 100% certain what somebody else wants. In that case, you either say, for example, 言いたがる "seems to want to say", or you use one of many ways to cast a bit of doubt on it: 言いたいでしょう, 言いたいと思います, etc. But you could ask, for example, 行きたいですか "Do you want to go?", since asking "Do you seem to want to go?" is pretty silly; the listener knows whether he/she wants to go or not.

furrykef wrote:It doesn't follow the final verb directly; it follows ん, which is a contraction of の in this context. Adding のです after a plain verb form emphasizes that the sentence is an explanation.

Ah, I recall running across this when skimming through a book, but didn't really take the time to understand it at the time. It seems simple enough.

furrykef wrote:whereas your version means "Many people say they use that site."

This is indeed what I thought he meant and exactly what I was trying to say haha. But after the explanation of のです/んです, his sentence is more understandable to me now.

furrykef wrote:言いたい means "I want to say". 言いたいです is indeed the proper way to turn this from plain into polite form, because the -tai form of a verb is an adjective. It can be conjugated like an adjective, too: 言いたくない "don't want to say", 言いたかった "wanted to say", 言いたくなかった "didn't want to say".

By the way, one important point here is that you generally can't use the -tai form to describe what somebody else wants, only what you want, because you're not psychic and can't know for 100% certain what somebody else wants.

Thanks! Looking up grammar can be somewhat difficult, and I hadn't run across the ～たい form before, but I knew it had to be something. I never would have suspected it turned it into an adjective! At least my explanation of です isn't really incorrect